Wonderful Patagonia tour

We have recently returned from the Patagonia trip which started Oct 27. This was our 9th Tauck tour and one of our top favorites. We got extremely lucky with the weather and had very little wind. We did get some snow and rain, but very little of it during our outdoor activities.

Notable experiences were:

LATAM airlines: terrible website and so-so business class physical environment, but the food and service were wonderful.

If you arrive early, a guided city tour of Santiago and a tour of Valparaiso street art are very interesting. We did not find Vina del Mar particularly charming.

Torres del Paine park is beautiful, especially the Salto Grande waterfall and the Nordenskjold Lake look-out. The views are highly dependent on weather, and we might have missed the mountaintops if the TD had not decided to return in the afternoon rather than exiting the park as planned.

The glaciers on the Argentinian side of Patagonia get progressively more spectacular.

The Singular Patagonia is a wonderful experience. It is one of the most comfortable and interesting hotels we have ever stayed in, but the service in the restaurant is inexplicably slow and disorganized. The Xelena hotel in El Calafate seemed more like a typical lake lodge but the restaurant was very good.

There are 3 long travel days on this trip but the scenery is worth it.

The food in Chile, sadly, was not generally exceptional, however the food in Argentina was excellent (except for the pasta, so much for the Italian heritage here!) I particularly enjoyed the grilled vegetables in Argentina.

The Tango show came at the end of an extremely long day but was excellent. Why Tango is not an Olympic sport is a mystery to me.

Our tour director, Marcos, was fantastic. Thank you, Marcos! Also, our fellow travelers were wonderful.

Tips:

You will be offered a lot of red meat on this trip. Your system may not be used to it, so pace yourself.

We had 35-degree mornings a couple of times, with highs of 45. As others have said, plan for wind. Waterproof trail or hiking shoes would be useful.

In terms of “dressy” clothing you would need almost none, but ladies you might want to bring one nice top for the first night and for the tango night.

If you stay extra days in Buenos Aires (which I do recommend) you can use American dollars, which are very desirable due to their current economy. Most businesses will also give you a better exchange rate than the official rate, and a discount over and above that if you use American cash.

Our private guide in BA suggested the “Cabify” app as a safer option in BA than Uber, however we used Uber without any problems.

Our first glacier excursion in Chile involved a boat ride that was packed with various tour groups. I am guessing 200-300 people were on that boat, and we all needed to be cozily indoors when the boat left and returned to the dock. 2 days later, 3 people had to leave our tour because of Covid. Plan accordingly: You do not want to miss even one day of this tour, it gets more jaw-dropping with every excursion!

Addendum:

We added 2 days to Iguazu Falls on our own after this trip. The plane ride to IGR airport (Argentina) is about 2 hours from BA. Our travel agent convinced us to stay at the Belmond Iguazu on the Brazil side. We had a panoramic view of the falls right from the front of the hotel. It was a beautiful hotel and location but due to border crossings and a long-term road construction project, it took 1.5 hours to get from the airport to the Belmond, and another 1.5 hours to get from the Belmond to the park entrance on the Argentinian side. Best to take this into consideration when deciding where to stay if you also go on your own. The falls are spectacular and worth the trouble.